


Megamind and the Beta Run

by 20thcenturyvole



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:17:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/20thcenturyvole/pseuds/20thcenturyvole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do-gooding is harder than it looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Megamind and the Beta Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EbilMe666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EbilMe666/gifts).



The morning sun blazed over Metro City, in a sky as blue as Megamind’s head. From this rooftop, the skyscrapers glittered, thrusting unnaturally from the landscape like a cluster of virulent warts. He took a deep breath of the city’s fresh spring scent: steam, a little hot garbage, and the exhaust fumes from the morning’s commuting citizens. Ahh, how he loved his city.

Clanking feet and the whirr of servos heralded Minion’s appearance, with coffee. “Good morning, sir!” he chirped, passing Megamind a paper cup. “Are you looking forward to your teleconference?”

“Yes, Minion!” Megamind said, swigging heroically and then (also heroically) fluttering his hand ineffectually in front of his scalded tongue. “The city council will assemble, surely to congratulate us on what a good job we’ve done keeping Metrocity safe. Savour your beverage, Minion, for that is the flavour of _triumph_.”

“Mmm,” Minion said approvingly. “Triumph makes my tank water taste like hazelnuts.”

Megamind pulled out his automatic zipline dispenser, slammed the back end into the wall behind him, and shot the harpoon end into the side of the nearest building. It hit with a satisfying metallic _crack_ and pulled taut immediately. He grabbed the handle, planted one foot on the roof’s ledge, and struck a mighty pose. “To the No Longer Evil Lair!”

~

The teleconference did not go as expected.

“You... you don’t like my work?” Megamind said, aghast. “But it’s helping! ...Isn't it?”

Half a dozen faces stared down from his megascreen with varying levels of sternness. The Mayor looked nervous and slightly embarrassed to be there; the chief of police looked narrow-eyed, and the Warden, next to her, looked exactly the same as he ever did; three city council members that Megamind only vaguely recognised all looked slightly incensed.

The Mayor tapped his fingers together nervously. “Well, it's true that the crime rate has dropped—“ he began.

“—Mostly because you’re no longer committing crime,” the chief of police said dourly. She tilted her head. “Admittedly, your so-called brain bots seem to be acting as a general deterrent.”

“Only because they terrorise our citizens!” one of the councillors burst out. “They’re a menace!” He looked embarrassed when the other faces turned towards him. “One of them bit me,” he complained.

“But they’ve been reprogrammed to only target evildoers, or guard people who show signs of distress,” Megamind said in confusion. “What were you doing when it attacked?”

“Don’t try to turn this around!” the councilman squawked, though the chief of police and the Warden were still eying him suspiciously. “Clearly your reprogramming isn’t good enough! And those teeth are unacceptably sharp!”

“Well, I... I suppose I could recall them for fine-tuning,” Megamind conceded, and tapped on his wrist device to send out a homing beacon. He sighed. “Protecting Metrocity is a work in progress.”

“About that,” said the mayor. “Does protecting Metro City have to involve so many ziplines hammered into municipal buildings?”

“They help me get around quickly to fight evildoers,” Megamind said, puzzled. “It’s a temporary stopgap, I admit, just until I perfect my glider cape. Really need to work on those cross-breezes...”

“Well, there have been some complaints from building managers,” the mayor said, “And our hospitals are concerned that they may cause a hazard for emergency helicopters.”

Megamind blanched. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll have them all removed before nightfall.” He unholstered the zipline dispenser and eyed it critically. “Maybe I can make one reusable and retractable version with the gun as the handle. Much more cost-effective, now that I think about it!”

“Metro City seems to be facing some kind of agricultural menace, too,” a councilwoman said, shuffling papers as she peered at him through her glasses. “Trees have been popping up on the street all over the city. They seem to be some sort of rapid-growth tropical plant, with hideous spiky blue fruit. Is this a leftover scheme from your bad old days, Megamind?”

“You mean my megafruits?” Megamind said, brightening. “Not leftover at all! In fact, they’re very nutritious, and provide a carefully selected spectrum of vitamins and minerals, as well as being delicious and filling.” He threw aside the zipline dispenser and gestured at Minion, who dutifully rolled out a pinboard covered in Megamind’s schematics and lab tests. Megamind found that props always helped a demonstration, and the panel of heads on the screen followed his eagerly flailing arms as he sought out the relevant data and pushed it closer to the screen. “As you can see, I based them on techno-organic hybrid technology. In the presence of sufficient quantities of garbage, the activated battery-seeds convert common plastics, industrial chemicals, and waste food around them into a slurry of specialised fuel that then incubates the battery-seed until it explodes into a tree ready to bear fruit, providing Metrocity’s population with a free food source that will ease the pressure simultaneously on the city’s soup kitchens and waste disposal infrastructure! Indeed, any citizen can enjoy the fruit’s tangy goodness!” He paused mid-flourish. “Unless they have a latex allergy. There’s a little banana in their DNA - I thought making them peelable would be the most convenient approach. But I’m working on a whole variety of megafruits to suit any palate!” He beamed.

There was a brief silence. The bespectacled councilwoman stared at him. Eventually, the mayor coughed and said, “Well, er, that is certainly an altruistic gesture, Megamind; however--"

“They’re growing everywhere,” the councilwoman said flatly.

“Yes,” the Mayor said, sounding a little relieved.

“I found one growing out of my trash can this morning,” the Warden said mildly. “It was four feet tall.”

Megamind flipped through his blueprints, frowning. “But that shouldn’t be possible. The seeds are inert until someone presses the little button on the side, and it has to be a human finger, I mean it reacts to body temperature as much as anything...”

He trailed off to the small chorus of groans.

“The little red button?” the Warden said.

“It looked so intriguing,” a councilman moaned, “But it didn’t do anything, so I threw it in the kitchen trash." He put his head in his hands. "I’m going to find a tree in my kitchen when I get home, aren’t I?”

“Possibly,” Megamind said weakly. Curse it all, he knew how tempting red buttons were! Why didn’t he program the seeds to grow with instructions printed on the side? He hung the blueprints back on the board and sighed. “Well, as I said, it’s a work in progress. I’ll figure out how to deal with the existing plants tonight.”

“The skins are also a slipping hazard,” said the bespectacled councilwoman blandly.

Megamind pushed the pinboard out of sight with slightly more force than necessary. “Well, that’s on litterbugs, not me. What next? Surely you liked my automatic respectability rover?”

“You mean the machine that accosts poorly-dressed citizens, steals their clothes, shears their hair, scrubs them down, and spits them out dressed in three-piece suits?” the chief’s voice was very sharp.

“My research shows that people are more likely to get a job if they’re clean and respectably dressed,” Megamind protested. “That’s why I programmed it to make a circuit of the city’s homeless shelters and rehabilitation clinics.” He toed the ground. “...And college campuses.”

The chief’s hand slapped the table loudly. Megamind (and the mayor) jumped. The chief leaned forward, her eyes glinting menacingly, and it occurred to Megamind that he really should have rethought taking this call on a giant screen that loomed over his head. “Dammit, Megamind!” she snapped. “I know you’re new at this, but people need to have a say in what happens to them, whether your intentions are bad or good!” She paused as the Warden leaned over and murmured something to her, showing her a page in a dossier. “Yes, yes, dammit, I know unemployment and recidivism are down too,” she muttered. She looked back at Megamind, stern, and then sighed. “Look, Megamind. The fruit trees, the... suit robot... they certainly have the potential to help. Honestly, the brain-bots make our jobs a little easier too.”

The mayor coughed, and mumbled something that sounded like, “...Frighten our tourists...”

The chief ignored him. “The point is, you can’t just inflict these things on people. That’s the supervillain way. Fix it.”

Her hand reached forward until it blocked his view, and the screen went black.

Megamind hung his head. “Oh,” he said, very quietly.

Minion clanked softly to his side. “Sir?” he said. “Are you alright?”

Megamind nodded, staring dejectedly at the ground. “Minion, may I have my slouching chair?”

Minion’s metal fingers clattered faintly against his tank as he gasped. Megamind hadn’t needed that chair in months. Now, as Minion wheeled it over, Megamind threw himself into its luxurious cushiony embrace, stuck one foot out, and wheeled it squeakily away to be alone with his thoughts.

The supervillain way, she said. Even as he strove to protect this city, he still managed to menace it. Once, he had been proud of his talent to sow chaos even inadvertently, but now it just felt like failure and rejection.

He didn’t know how many minutes passed, but after a while he registered Minion’s voice – faint and far away, clearly speaking with someone, and soon drowned out by an increasingly loud chorus of robotic _bou_ s. His brain bots were home.

He uncurled from his ball of dejection, and smiled a bit as one of his glowing little monsters wormed its way into his lap, barking its monotone joy as he petted it. Soon he was surrounded by them, all vying for his affection. “Did you miss your daddy?” he said softly, petting their domes and eyestalks and nimbly avoiding their teeth. “I suppose I can make those retractable,” he sighed.

“What, the teeth?”

Megamind started, and spun around in his chair. Roxanne was there, radiant in her pencil skirt and pumps, a brain bot cradled in her arms. They really did like her. “Roxanne! Of course, we were going to... to have brunch.” He sighed again. He knew he looked miserable, but he couldn’t work up the energy to look anything else.

“Oh, Megamind.” Roxanne let the brain bot go and knelt in front of his chair. “What happened? You were all excited for this morning. Something about a teleconference with the mayor?”

Megamind told her everything. About his failure as a hero. About his clear inability to stop thinking like a supervillain. About his doubts that he was truly cut out for the day-to-day do-gooding that was the bread and butter of superhero work when all he could think about was how to do good more efficiently. He told her about the council’s problems with the brain bots – “Okay, well, the scoop is that councilman was involved in an altercation with a lady friend four night ago, and he got belligerent and one of your brain bots bit him on the butt, so if you ask me they’ve been programmed _fine_ ,” – and the ziplines – “Aw, that’ll make the Metro City parkour team sad,” – and the megafruit trees – “Okay, yeah, they keep blocking the garbage chute in my building. Tasty, though!” – and the respectability rover – “Yes, definitely make that voluntary. It’s great, but two things nobody likes to be surprised by are nudity and scissors. Oh, Megamind,” she said, taking his hand, “Did they actually tell you to, you know... stop?”

“No,” Megamind conceded. “Just fix it.”

“And these are all problems you can fix, right?”

“I think so.” He sniffed, and drew out a tablet. “I thought up a behavioural patch for the respectability rover and an altered propagation system for the megafruit while I was having my chair-time. It’s just—“ he sighed gustily, slumping dramatically and staring into the middle distance. “What if I can’t fix _me_?”

“Hey,” Roxanne said, planting her hands on her hips. Megamind met her determined gaze. “Did you really think this was going to be an easy gig? Look, you’ve been doing the supervillain thing for years, and the superhero thing for way less time. You’re set in a certain way of thinking, and that’s not going to change overnight. You’re always going to have to keep figuring it out, taking more information on board and adjusting. That’s what people do. You’re—“

“—A work in progress,” Megamind finished.

Roxanne beamed. “Exactly!”

Her smile was dazzling, as was her confidence. He couldn’t help but smile back.

“An evolving prototype,” he mused. “I can work with that. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get it right the first time!”

“Unless it is,” Roxanne said hastily.

“Unless it is,” he agreed. “But I can work with that! Emergency adjustments are my thing. Minion!”

Minion, who had obviously been lurking in earshot this whole time, stepped out of the shadows with a smile. “Sir!”

“Come! We must brunch. And then – to work!”

**Author's Note:**

> Now that names are revealed: I owe enormous thanks to Morbane for her cheerleading, even as she dealt with helping to run the challenge. Writing afternoons at her house, exchanges of AHHH BEARS over gmail, gentle reminders that deadlines are not a suggestion - all of them helped get this written!


End file.
